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Originally Posted by olddog
The question was posed by old4hats about the number of turtledog stands that had been built. Went back and reviewed a few threads, the Turtlelady stand, the TurtleDog stand and a thread by domromer. Here is what I was able to find and assume that there may be others.

Quick question...getting ready to build me one of these, and I will need it to be able to work with a couple of different sized hammocks.

What total length of center pole am I going to want to support a HH explorer deluxe, with a standard whoopie sling suspension? And be able to lay the HH Hex along that center pole so that the pole acts as the ridgeline on the tarp?

I intend to use this in my backyard for this setup, as well as in the house to support a smaller hammock without netting/tarp. I'm also going to use this stand to demonstrate a variety of hammocks during an upcoming class at a Backwoods outdoors store.

I'm THINKING that I would cut the legs, and the center pole so that they're each 7' long...making that center pole 14' plus a few inches for the join.

I don't have a HH so I can't speak to that. 7' is probably going to be taller than you need the tripods to be but easier to cut some more off than to add it back! Mine have ended up being between 72" and 78" for the most part.

I think with multiple hammocks you'll just need to make customized suspension for each. These tripods aren't trees.

For the rigepole, I took two 10' pieces and cut one 6' and 4', and the other 5' and 5'. That offers a lot of options.

I've been using a cut-down tablecloth hammock with mini-spreader bars a lot, so I modified my stand to fit. I cut the two halves of the ridge pole to 57". One is 54" +3" for connector. That makes the ridgeline length 111". That enabled me to cut down the 6 tripod legs. The four longest ones are 65". The overall height of the stand is about 62", and the height of the ridgepole is 54". This is perfect for this hammock, because I don't need to use whoopies. The triangular suspension for the mini-spreader bar attaches via a nacrabiner directly to a quick link hanging from the hinge. The same quick link holds the ridgepole cap. This has proven to be easy to set up and take down (< 3 minutes), and easy to store or transport.

OK...went to HD today, picked up all the fixin's for a TD stand. Got them to precut the 2x2s for me for free, but couldn't get them to cut down the fence rails...LOL!

Haven't had time to put things together yet, but will make it happen this weekend.

Just as an FYI, I cut everything to 7' lengths so that I could make sure I had enough height and distance between ends for my HH Explorer Deluxe with whoopies. If it ends up being too long/tall, I'll cut them down accordingly.

Will post pics of this at some point, as I plan using this stand for an upcoming Hammock camping class.